


to reach for hands that are not there

by avienexjel



Series: one-shots.  raw. [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Heartbreak, Hurt Tony Stark, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Pining, Tony Stark Doesn't Get a Hug, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric, Unrequited Love, unrequited pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:02:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avienexjel/pseuds/avienexjel
Summary: "better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there."- otomo no yakamochiNow when he wakes up in the mornings and sees the sunlight drifting through the window, he thinks of Steve's blonde hair - the color of it, the way he parts it on the side sometimes like all the old photographs from the 40s.  When he gets out of bed and the chill air hits his bare arms, he thinks of ice, and planes, and sacrifice.God, he's so lonely.Thinking about Steve is so lonely.





	to reach for hands that are not there

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone reading "people...creatures," i've just been feeling really uninspired lately and i apologize for that. i'm sorry i haven't updated in literally a month. i'll get to ch 20 soon, i promise.

 

Tony isn't quite sure why, but he's surprised to see how normal he looks the day after Steve leaves.

He'd...he'd expected himself to look different, somehow.  As if sorrow were a shirt you could drape over your body, to cover up all the scars and scrapes and skinny collarbones with pain of a different kind.

But he looks at his reflection and sees the same brown eyes staring back, the same cheekbones, the same beard, even - albeit a little scruffier than last he checked.  Inside, there is two of himself - a With-Steve Tony and a Without-Steve Tony, but on the outside, he is the same.

=

Sometimes, right before he showers, he leans against the counter and studies himself listlessly in the mirror.  He wonders what Steve is doing right now - if he is washing up, clearing the dishes. He wonders what Sharon sees when she looks at him, and thinks - perhaps arrogantly - that she could not possibly love him the way Tony does.

Yes.  Tony loves him.  Loving someone has never been hard for him to admit; it is the being loved back, that is the problem, the missing worm at the end of the hook.  

Anyway, sometimes he imagines them together while he's soaping himself or letting the hot water run down his back in strips, like his own form of baptism.  They look good together, Steve and Sharon, both S names and blonde and pretty. He bets Sharon touches him when they brush their teeth together, and they both laugh when Steve's mouth foams over with white.  

Do they kiss before they go to sleep?  Do they cuddle together, hand to thigh to chest?  He's not sure what hurts more - the knowing, or the not knowing.  Maybe they both hurt equally. Maybe it's unmeasurable pain.

=

Natasha knows his little secret.  He is pretty sure she's the only one.  When he drinks at odd hours in the kitchen, sometimes she will come down and join him.  He'll pass the bottle to her and she'll pass it back, and the night hours will drift by like thick honey as they share small sips with each other.  He thinks that of all people, he is glad that she is the one who knows. After all, Natasha gets it. Bruce is dating Betty. She gets it.

When he isn't drinking in the kitchen, though, he's downstairs in the workshop hammering out his emotions or out on the balcony, watching the sun set.  It's become therapy, the watching - he likes to see the sky bruise and purple, wash over with a myriad of colors you just can't find in a Crayola box. Maybe that's one good thing about Steve leaving; he's learnt to appreciate that sort of thing.  Nature, and all that.

He remembers how Steve used to talk to him all the time about sunrises and sunsets and everything, and how a spark ingested his voice whenever he did.  It was like Steve could see all the life in things Tony just viewed as commonplace. That's what makes them different, he thinks. That's why Steve has always been the artist.

"Isn't this beautiful," Steve would say about the oddest things - like rain passing down in front of headlights, or the smoke that curls up from the stove.  

"It's rain," Tony would say with an amused smile.  "It's just smoke."

"Yeah, I know," Steve said, and he'd look at Tony like - like Tony was fascinating too, like Tony carried the same magic, the same  _ life  _ as rain and smoke and sunsets did.  "But I like it. I think it's - it's nice.  I like the idea of everything being a part of everything.  Of the rain being part of the sky, of the smoke being part of, I don't know, our dinner.  You know?"

Tony didn't know, but he agreed anyway.  Steve - to him, Steve is important.

=

He read one time in a book by Carl Sagan that "for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."  He wonders if that's true and tries to think back to a time where he was happy before Steve.

Well, there was Jarvis as a kid, and Rhodey in MIT.  There was Pepper, there's always Pepper, and of course - he can't forget - forget -

God, he's so lonely.  

Thinking about Steve is lonely.

It's funny that he kind of thinks about Steve as "my Steve," even though there has never been and never will be a "my Steve."  He knows the difference, though, between one and the other - Steve Rogers is in love with Sharon, is married to her, sleeps next to her.   _ His  _ Steve is the one from when the Avengers all still lived in the Tower and none of them left, for love or otherwise.  His Steve is the one who brought food down for Tony when he forgot to eat and sat next to him during movie nights and wore soft cotton sweatpants instead of his Captain America gear, which is the only thing any of them see him in nowadays.

His Steve looks at him with fond smiles and fonder eyes.  

His Steve might even love him.

=

"You should get out more," Natasha tells him one day.  For once, they are not sitting over a bottle of vodka but lunch leftovers, cooked by Bruce and Betty as a joint project.

Tony feels bad.  Natasha does not feel love often, nor does she usually receive it.  For admired heroes, they are quite lonely - or maybe it's just he and Tash.  Maybe they're the defects, the ones who don't fit in.

"Funny for you to say," he says.  His snark is hollow. It doesn't feel real.  

"I'm not the one staying up for days on end with nothing but water and coffee to keep me sustained," Natasha replies lightly.  That's Natasha - always light. She could be talking about killing a puppy and she would say it the same way, with no inflection, not even a facial twitch.  Tony wonders if it's the Red Room that beat this into her. He wonders if maybe it was Betty and Bruce.

"What should I do, then?"  He sounds wrung out, tired.  That is what he is, these days - not Tony Stark, the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist.  Tony Stark, the man who's just reached the wrong side of forty and loves someone who is not only married but is twenty five.  That is who he is, that is how he is defined - it seems like everywhere he goes, he will carry a part of Steve with him. He loves Steve and that love is so much of his identity that it frightens him.

"Like I said," Natasha tells him, standing gracefully.  Tony catches himself thinking for a moment - just a moment - that it is sad beyond words to see Bruce miss out on the beautiful enigma that is Natasha Romanoff, and that he himself would treat her right.  Natasha is too good for him. People he loves are too good for him. "Go out more. Go on a date, have Pepper set you up with someone. She's a good matchmaker."

"And you know that how?" Tony says wryly.  Natasha and Pepper have grown close over the past few months.  He isn't sure whether to be scared out of his wits or happy (maybe a little bit of both).

Natasha shrugs one slim shoulder.  Tony imagines, fleetingly, that maybe she and Pepper have a chance.  "Go talk to Pepper, Tony. Talk to someone who isn't like me - who can't relate as much to you.  I'm no use when we're both in the bottle, you know it."

_ But I don't want to talk to Pepper,  _ Tony thinks.   _ I want to talk to Steve. _

It is like she knows what he is thinking, because she turns right before she goes and says, "Talk to him, or don't.  It's your decision. But know that wallowing in your sorrow isn't going to do anything." Her eyes are soft and green.  She looks like someone he could love intimately, past passion and friendship and sex and straight into the kind of love where he can feel her when she is not around.  That kind of love - old and young, familiar and new. But deep in his heart he knows that Natasha is not for him. He is not sure who could possibly be for him.

=

Tony doesn't follow Natasha's advice.  Maybe one day he will, but definitely not for that month or the month after.

He goes down to his workshop and drinks, and drinks, and drinks until the ceiling spins and he's drooling out the left corner of his mouth.   _ Wow,  _ he thinks.  Even his thoughts are slurred.   _ 'M a fuckin' mess.  _

He's glad, suddenly, that Sharon is there for Steve.  God knows Tony wouldn't be - never sober, always working, just like dear ol' Dad.  That's not what Steve wants, wanted in a partner. Steve is the white picket fence, two dogs and a cat, three children kind of man.  With an eight to four job and a wife that kisses him when he comes home, except he Avenges instead of working in an office.

_ What do I want?  _ he asks himself.  Will he ever give up Iron Man?  Will he eventually settle down? Will he die a playboy or - a husband, a father, a grandfather?  He is not young like he used to be; the lines in his face are like cracks instead of creases. His eyes have begun to darken like open wounds.  

When he's feeling particularly spiteful, he wants to ask Steve what he'll do when the serum keeps his heart pumping and his skin tight and Sharon dies just like Peggy did, just like they all will before Steve's time.   _ Will you kill yourself?  _ he thinks, a nasty little throb of voice in his head.   _ Will you go down fighting, Steve?  Or will you end up like me? _

It's funny because Tony feels like he knows what Steve will go through, even though he could not possibly understand what it is like to age slowly, slow as death.  Can you understand an experience you have not intimately suffered? He doesn't know. That kind of question has always belonged to Steve, who is a dreamer and a philosopher at heart.

He takes a swig from the glass in his hand and realize the bottle's all empty.  It's almost frightening how quickly he seems to go through them - empty, empty, empty.  Everything is empty - the wine, his heart, his heavy head. It lolls on its stem, tips up so that he's staring at the ceiling.  He can see Steve in the bare expanse of it, Steve's rough hands and blue eyes and thin pink mouth in the white wash of the paint.  

Steve doesn't dream of him but he wishes he would.  Wake up in the morning and think,  _ I saw Tony last night, even though I didn't,  _ the way Tony sees him in the ceiling and thinks clear as day that  _ I love you.   _ If he were a woman, would it make a difference?  If he were better - cooler - kinder - like Sharon - would it have made a difference?

Tony takes out a new bottle.  It's not wine anymore, it's just pure hard vodka, the kind Natasha likes.   _ Krupnik -  _ she drinks it every time she goes to Russia, probably rides the high of it as she slits another target's throat.  It is just strong enough to blur the blood on their hands.

Tony drinks half the bottle before realizing, faintly, that maybe he's had a little too much.  He drops the vodka and lets it spill out over the floor, staggering out the doorway. He can hear FRIDAY talking to him, probably disappointed - well, he always knew he was going to be a shitty dad - but he can't hear properly or walk properly.

He ends up in the elevator somehow and by the time he reaches the penthouse, he's on the floor.

While he's curled in the hallway, his face ends up somewhere near where the carpet meets the wall and he sees a bug.  An ant, actually, its little black body wriggling as it moves through the crook. It's strangely fascinating, watching it travel - does it know he could kill it, he wonders, does it know what there is to know?

Ants are such unlucky and lucky creatures.  They feel no deep and profound joy, and yet they are free from the pain of sadness.

It would be easy, Tony thinks, just to kill it.  To squish its small body and brain out on the red carpet floor.  What do ants dream about right before they die? He once read in a journal somewhere that ants can smell death through the oleic acid a corpse emits.  It is not the sensation of death, the sight of it - but acid. Just some chemicals mixed up in a leaking body.

He also read, once, that if you cover a live ant in oleic, the other ants will cart it off even if it's still moving, still flailing.  The smell of death is death, that's what it is to ants. If you smell dead you are dead. We don't want you anymore.

There's something - something almost profound about the thought - the thought of death without dying.  Tony tries to grasp onto that small thread, wind it to his chest, decipher it. But he is too drunk, and his sadness too sober.  He doesn't know what he wants to say - only that he has things inside him that he feels and breathes and thinks. Things that, if he opened his mouth to speak them, could not come out in words.  Only color.

Somehow he makes it to bed.  It smells different than normal, almost like Steve.  Steve always had this distinct scent, of lemon soap and something very particular, something very male and soft.

Tony presses his face into the pillow.  The root problem is not that he doesn't want to love him, that it is has always been easy to love Steve.  The real problem is that loving him has made Tony a better person. 

He believes, innately, that getting to love good people is a privilege.  Imagine not being able to love people, imagine not being able to see the goodness in others and fall in love with that.  It is almost like Steve's opened up this avenue in his heart that has given Tony's every thought new meaning and emotion.  Now when he wakes up in the mornings and sees the sunlight drifting through the window, he thinks of Steve's blonde hair - the color of it, the way he parts it on the side sometimes like all the old photographs from the 40s.  When he gets out of bed and the chill air hits his bare arms, he thinks of ice, and planes, and sacrifice. 

He's afraid to love Steve, of course he is, but he is more afraid of what he will regress to when he stops.  Sooner or later, Steve Rogers will fade away to Captain America again, and then Tony will be lost. What if he forgets what it is like to feel so deeply?  What if he forgets to be good?

It must be late now.  He should sleep. Listlessly he wonders if the ant on the carpet had a direction, if it was lost or still trying to find its queen.  

=

Sometimes when you are sad, the days grow long.  

You mill through life and you never quite notice the length stretching on and on and on until it seems endless.  A multitude of days, of sleeping and waking and dreaming. Of going down to the coffee shop on Park Avenue and staring into your mug until it's time to close up.  Of cycling through a never-ending pattern that stretches like a wad of gum, thin in the middle from overt elongation, scabbed in the middle with holes. Tony works and talks to Natasha, sometimes, and he sleeps in the shop and tries to forget about when he got drunk and went to Steve's floor instead of his own.  

He starts looking forward to sleeping.  It used to be that he never slept, that he always wanted to pound out a new idea for an invention in the workshop.  "Sleep is for the weak," that was his motto; he was an insomniac, thought he could survive off of the barest minimalities for basic human function.  Life used to be too important to waste on lying in the dark with his eyes closed and the wormhole whoring him out. But now he likes the feeling he gets when he lies in bed and sleep takes him away.  He has fallen in love with the slow, lazy susurrus that tugs him under; it's hard to describe. It is like lying at the line between beach and ocean on a hot night, when it is dark and the water is black and it weaves back and forth over the sand.

The only problem with sleep, he realizes, is that he will occasionally dream.  He dreams about the Avengers dying, sometimes, and the wormhole. He dreams of Afghanistan and blinking the hot sand from his eyes, coughing water from his lungs.  And he dreams about Steve a lot too, Steve dying or Steve in pain or Steve hurting him. He dreams of Steve sinking his shield into his arc reactor and it  _ hurts,  _ even though he knows Cap would never do that in real life.

So he goes to the workshop a lot and tries to tire himself out until he's too exhausted to dream.  Or he'll drink, because when he drinks he goes under heavier, even if he wakes up with a splitting headache in the morning.  It's probably unhealthy - if Natasha knew, she'd yell at him - but the fact is that at least it only affects him. Another motto Tony has: it's okay to self-destruct as long as you aren't hurting anyone else.

Other times he's more okay, and he acts normal and laughs with his teammates and prepares breakfast, trying to forget that Steve's pancakes were always really good for someone who rarely saw food as a kid.  He bets Sharon has eaten Steve's pancakes in the mornings and loved them. He bets Steve watches her with that little pleased smile that is so uniquely  _ Steve,  _ and teases her about too much syrup, and puts in all her favorite fruits.  

Steve's favorite fruit is either banana or cantaloupe, but he can never decide.  Tony knows this, because he knows Steve.

Sometimes he dreams about a life with love in it, and his chest fills with hot blood, and his mouth will taste like he is drinking Pablo Neruda.  He wants to wake up on a warm chest on a summer dawn and he wants someone to nuzzle close. He wants to know what Steve tastes like, morning mouth or not, when he is soft and sleep-rumpled and the blankets smell like soap and body.  He wants Sharon to be gone, to have never existed, for Steve to be downstairs smiling at Tony with a plate of breakfast after a long night of work-bingeing. He - God. He wants, and he'll never get, not anymore. 

Maybe he has lost his chance.  Maybe he never had one.

There was one time when Tony really thought Steve felt something back, just one time, when they had gone out to Central Park after trying a new restaurant and everyone else was on a mission or on a different planet (Thor).  Steve's face had been so close, planes of bruised purple and blue in the dark, like a Picasso painting. Shadows disjointing his features, changing him into something both fantastical and human.

"Hey, Tony," Steve had said, then paused, like he had lost the confidence to say what he'd been planning.

"Hey, Steve," Tony replied back amusedly.  "Something you'd like to say?"

"No, I…."  Steve stopped abruptly in the middle of their loop around the park, and his expression shuttered, up and down, up and down.  "I just wanted to say…." He gave an abashed smile. "I guess I'm just really glad I know you. You're, you're a good friend, Tony."

_ A good friend.   _ Tony swallowed down his bitterness at the word.   _ Friend.   _ "Yeah, you too," he replied lightly, and nudged Steve's shoulder with a grin to clear the air.  Something strange had settled in his gut, like a black hole, and so he pointed at an ice cream stand across the park.  "Want some dessert?"

"Sure," Steve said, and he looked at Tony for a moment with some indecipherable, unwavering gaze, like he was memorizing Tony as hard as Tony was memorizing him.  And then that was that. They went to go get ice cream, and Tony woke up in the morning with a mouth still sweet and sticky with mint chocolate on the couch in the living room, covered in a blanket.  Steve wasn't there anymore, but the cushion beside him was still creased and warm. 

Only a month later, Sharon asked Steve out.  Tony still remembers the nervous smile as he helped Steve adjust his tie for the first date.  He still remembers thinking,  _ You couldn't want this, could you, Steve? _

=

Here's a secret - one time, he kissed Natasha, and she kissed back.

Here's a secret - Steve saw, too, and he didn't know till JARVIS told him later - but that was after the supersoldier was already dating.

Here's a secret - Natasha tastes sweet, like summer wine and lemonade and a faint hint of lipstick.  She is pretty and her hair reminds Tony of blood, but not in a bad way - more like blood in the warm heavy feeling that rushes through your veins.  The pump through aortas. That kind of vividness, that hot blush, the heat behind emotion. She's a woman on fire.

Maybe this is why they go so well together.  They both want people they cannot have, they are both sad, they are red and wild.

Tony does not regret kissing Natasha, even now.  The only thing he regrets is that he does not love her, just as she does not love him.  It would be easier, to love each other. To wake up and see a beautiful woman in his bed that is all his and glow with the happiness of it.  To see Steve and Sharon when they stop by the Tower and not feel like his heart is breaking all over again.

=

Steve comes by to visit when Tony is alone in the Tower for one rare day.  He doesn't bring Sharon, and Tony doesn't want to think about what this means, because deep inside he's aware that it doesn't mean a thing.

"Hi, Tony," Steve says when the elevator door opens up and Tony's there, waiting for him, always waiting.  "It's good to see you."

_ I missed you  _ is on the tip of Tony's tongue, and it nearly bursts out when Steve  _ smiles  _ at him all bright and goofy like he's wont to do, but that's not appropriate anymore.  Steve's married, and Tony's a playboy. (That's a stupid excuse. He's just afraid of what else will come loose if he starts down that path.)

"You too," he says casually, and strides over to the fridge.  "I'm getting a beer. Soda?"

"Yeah, thanks," Steve says, and Tony tries to ignore the easy way the blonde leans his hip against the counter and watches him.  

"So, what brings you here today?" Tony says as they settle on the couch.  He itches for the remote, which is right next to Steve's thigh, but the other man makes no effort to turn on the TV.   _ Smooth, Tony.  It's not like a guy can't just visit his teammates once in awhile. _

Steve shrugs and gives him a faintly amused look.  "Sharon's having a Girls' Day or something. I heard she's going shopping with Maria Hill.  So I came here."

Tony can't help the snort.  "Hill? Are you kidding me?"

"Apparently she has really good taste in clothes, according to Sharon," Steve replies, his eyes squinting the way they do when he's tamping down a laugh.  "She's also apparently not as scary 'outside of work.'"

"Hard to believe," Tony says, and settles back as the beer slowly works its way through him.  He won't be getting drunk anytime soon, forget tipsy, but the warm rush is soothing.

"I haven't seen you outside of battle in maybe a month," Steve murmurs apologetically.  He lets out a short laugh. "I've been so busy, and Sharon's got so many expectations. I don't know.  I've missed you, Tony."

"I've missed you too," Tony says, keeping his tone light and easy.  "How's it going between you too, though? Having a lot of...fun?"

Steve rolls his eyes.  "Of course that's the first thing you go to.  I'm not telling you."

"That in itself is an answer."  Tony grins.

They banter back and forth for a little, and eventually Steve picks up the remote and they watch a romcom about some blonde girl and a guy who looks a little too grey for her age.  Tony can hardly focus on the movie; he wants so desperately for this moment to last, for Steve's subtle leaning towards him to be purposeful rather than unconscious. He wants to shut that goddamn stupid movie off and grab Steve and have him the way the blonde onscreen is currently making out with her older lover.  He wishes being happy for Steve were enough. He wishes everything were enough.

Eventually, Steve has to go.  They stand quietly in front of the elevator door for a moment, and Tony almost -  _ almost -  _ offers to accompany him down to the lobby.  But it would be too awkward. He doesn't know what he would do, standing alone in an elevator like that.  

"I'll come back soon," Steve promises, and he gives Tony one of those sweet, heart-melting smiles that has Tony floundering in its wake.  "You should - you should come visit us, Tony. I'm sure Sharon would love to see you."

_ Sharon.   _ The name itself leaves a volatile feeling in his abdomen.  "I will," Tony lies, and smiles back. "See you, Steve. Don't be a stranger."

Steve's smile is strange, when the elevator dings open and he backs into it, waving.  "I won't."

As soon as Steve's well and truly gone, Tony drains the leftover drops of his beer before stumbling back down to the workshop to find more beer to drink.  The hollow of his chest greys with a quiet, prickling loneliness, and the feeling warps into him the way it'd feel if he were to dip the insides of himself into water.  He lies down horizontally on the workshop bench and closes his eyes so that the ceiling will stop spinning. 

He should've eaten more before he drank.  He should have, he should have, he should have.

His cell rings.  It's Natasha, probably calling him about Steve because she always seems to know everything that goes on regardless of whether she's actually present for it.  But Tony doesn't pick up. Instead, he lies flat on his back and listens to the soft classical JARVIS is playing because JARVIS always knows exactly what he needs.

He needs to stop being so fucking sad.  He needs to be happy for Steve. But it's just so  _ hard. _

The thing is, it was okay, you know, loving Steve when he still lived in the Tower.  Tony's never been selfish - he's always been (mostly) fine with taking what he can get.  And if friendship's all that Steve will give, he'll settle with that. But - now - he feels like he rarely sees the blonde anymore.  He feels adrift, like he's been cast into the middle of an ocean and there's only water on all sides, and Steve's not even here to make breakfast anymore.

He's Iron Man, he's a Stark, and Stark men are made of iron.  But Tony's rusting. Steve's gone and he's bending under the weight of it.

"JARVIS," he whispers, and it feels like his voice is coming from another spot within him that is deeper and further than he has ever drawn anything from before.  He flails to sit up and lies back down when his head gets dizzy again. "You up?" 

"For you, Sir," JARVIS says, and Tony pretends like the person he loves is saying this to him and not just an AI named after a long-dead butler.  His head quiets and dulls, and the ceiling smooths out, and his heart slowly, slowly forgets. "Always."

=

Someday he will die and Steve will live on, long, long after his friends have all passed around him.

That's a lonely existence, Tony thinks.  To fall in love again, and to lose them. That's true pain.

Then again, Steve could die in battle, in his uniform with the shield still strapped to his fist.  He could die in front of Iron Man and Tony would be able to do nothing about it, would hear the stuttered breathing in his helmet and see the light fade from Steve's eyes.  This could happen too, and maybe Tony is unbearably cruel and selfish, but as much as he prays for Steve's happiness, he would much rather die before Steve.

To die  _ for  _ Steve.  What a hopelessly romantic thought.

God, the things he would do with Steve, has dreamed of doing with Steve, if he had him.  Not even sexual ideas, no, but simple things - like shopping at the supermarket and having Steve laugh at him if he did the math faster than the cashier.  Baking Christmas-themed cookies in the kitchen and tasting raw dough off of Steve's finger. On holidays, going outside - just the two of them - to watch the snow fall.  Watching Steve's breath mist from his mouth. Watching Steve's laughter produce white clouds.

He's glad Steve's happy, that's all he can say, he supposes.  He will move on and maybe find someone else after whom to pine, and Steve will live and die in Sharon's arms.  It's okay. That's all that matters - that Steve is happy.

It is okay, he'll be okay.

Just as long as Steve is happy.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> how was this ? :) i wrote this from the roots of myself (wow, cliche) so i hope it was an okay read lol


End file.
